Review: Samsung’s ATIV Odyssey is Windows Phone 8 on a budget

Screen aside, this handset is a good choice for the free-with-contract crowd.

Enlarge / Samsung's ATIV Odyssey marries low-cost hardware with Windows Phone 8, but is it a good match?

Andrew Cunningham

Here at Ars we naturally spend a lot of time covering high-end, cutting-edge smartphones. You guys tend to be technology enthusiasts, and technology enthusiasts are generally more excited about newer, bigger, faster, higher-specced phones than you are by middle-of-the-road or low-end stuff.

Still, the free-with-contract market segment is important, especially for people moving from a feature phone to a smartphone for the first time. Even though the $199 or more that you'd drop on a high-end phone pales in comparison to the thousands of dollars you'll pay for voice, texts, and data over the course of a standard two-year smartphone contract, it might be the case that someone living from paycheck to paycheck has the cash to pay for a smartphone plan every month but can't spend a few hundred dollars up-front for hardware to use with it. There's also, of course, something psychologically alluring about a price tag of $0, even if you have to make some compromises to get it—either way, it's a part of the market I'd like to start paying a little more attention to.

Samsung's ATIV Odyssey, a new midrange phone running Microsoft's Windows Phone 8, isn't quite free-with-contract, but as of this writing you can buy it with a two-year Verizon Wireless contract for a mere $9.99. It obviously gives things up compared to higher-end Windows phones like HTC's Windows Phone 8X, Nokia's Lumia 920, or Samsung's own ATIV S handset, but for people looking to get into the smartphone (or Windows Phone) game for cheap, how does it stack up?

Body and build quality

Specs at a glance: Samsung ATIV Odyssey

Screen

800x480 4.0" (233 ppi) Super AMOLED touchscreen

OS

Windows Phone 8

CPU

Dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus

RAM

1GB

GPU

Qualcomm Adreno 225

Storage

8GB NAND flash, expandable via microSD

Networking

802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE

Ports

Micro USB, headphones

Camera

5.0MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera

Size

4.82" x 2.51" x 0.43" (122.43 x 63.75 x 10.92 mm)

Weight

0.28 lbs (125g)

Battery

2100 mAh

Price

$9.99 with two-year contract, $479.99 without

The Odyssey's build quality isn't bad, but it's definitely not premium—as in many of Samsung's other handsets, the body is all-plastic, albeit plastic with a chrome trim and a dark gray, faux-brushed-metal back. If you're used to the company's Galaxy lineup, the phone is much smaller than either the S III or the Note II, but it's immediately identifiable as a relative of those two handsets.

The smooth plastic makes for a phone that slides around pretty easily, as opposed to the slightly grippy textured backs of phones like the HTC Windows Phone 8X or the BlackBerry Z10 or even Samsung's own Galaxy Nexus—the latter phones definitely feel a bit more stable in the hand. The curved back, 0.43" thickness, and 4.4 ounce weight all add up to a phone that otherwise feels pretty good to hold—its smaller size and 4" screen almost feel like throwbacks next to the ever-ballooning sizes of high-end Android handsets, but it's extremely comfortable to use in one hand and even those with smaller hands should have no trouble reaching any element on the screen with one thumb without straining.

The button and port selection is the same as in other Windows Phone 8 handsets we've seen, though the layout differs slightly—there's a headphone jack on the top, a micro USB port (for syncing with a computer and for charging) on the bottom, a volume rocker on the left edge of the phone, and power and camera buttons on the right edge. Capacitive back, Windows, and search buttons are located underneath the screen—these buttons light up and trigger haptic feedback when pressed.

Enlarge/ The Windows Phone navigation buttons light up when you interact with them.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ Remove the phone's back to expose its SIM card and removable battery. Also present: the camera, LED flash, and speaker grille.

Andrew Cunningham

One thing the Odyssey offers that some competing phones don't is a microSD card slot, located under a cover on the phone's left edge. If you like to carry a lot of music or video around on your phone, this card slot will quickly prove itself useful—the phone has only 8GB of internal storage to its name. Removing the plastic back panel also supplies access to the phone's microSIM card slot and its removable battery—the phone's 5 megapixel camera and LED flash are also located on the back of the phone toward the top. Toward the bottom is the grille for the phone's speaker, which is about as good as you'd expect—it's loud enough and high-quality enough for things like basic games and YouTube videos, but pack headphones if audio quality is something you're interested in.

The screen

The build quality isn't what we'd consider high-end or premium, but it's good for what it is—a solid mid-range phone that feels like it could handle being dropped a few times without much ill effect.

We've got a few more issues with the 4" screen, which is probably one of the phone's weakest aspects. The 800x480 resolution is lower than we're used to in high-end phones, but that's not the main issue—it's competitive with other phones in the price bracket, and Windows Phone's big, bold tiles and icons tend to look pretty good even on less dense displays. It uses one of Samsung's Super AMOLED displays, though, and it's susceptible to most of the weaknesses inherent to the technology.

It's been awhile since we've looked at a Super AMOLED phone, so let's talk briefly about what it means: traditionally, an LCD pixel is composed of three subpixels—a red stripe, a green stripe, and a blue stripe, all of which are the same size. AMOLED displays use an alternating subpixel pattern (which differs depending on the particular type of display you're looking at), and the particular one that this display uses is called PenTile—its subpixel arrangement is red, then green, then blue, then green again. This arrangement takes advantage of the human eye's sensitivity to green, allowing Samsung to deliver panels that use one-third fewer subpixels to enable the same apparent display resolution and roughly similar color and brightness, thus saving money and decreasing power usage.

In practice, this subpixel arrangement often makes for screens that look ever-so-slightly off. Color and white balance are generally the most obvious casualties—colors tend to look a bit too saturated, and the screens often take on a vaguely bluish or greenish tint, not surprising given the higher number of green subpixels relative to red and blue subpixels. You'll notice both of these properties in the Odyssey, and it's exacerbated by Windows Phone's use of bright, solid colors.

The other problem—and one that is more noticeable on lower-resolution panels—is that of so-called "fuzzy text." Because of an AMOLED display's unique subpixel arrangement, you can sometimes see individual subpixels, especially around fine details. White text on a black background, a common occurrence given Windows Phone's default theming, makes this particularly easy to see.

Neither a lower pixel density nor a Super AMOLED screen are in any way unique to the ATIV Odyssey, but for this review we thought we'd spend a little extra time highlighting the differences. We'll show you two pairs of pictures here, both comparing the Odyssey to the HTC 8X. The first pair will be screenshots, intended to show Windows Phone 8 UI elements rendered at both the 8X's resolution of 1280x720 and the Odyssey's resolution of 800x480—both have been blown up to be 640 pixels wide, to better demonstrate the loss in detail compared to the higher-end phone. The second pair will be zoomed-in photographs of the two screens, which will demonstrate the added weaknesses of the Odyssey's Super AMOLED display relative to the 8X's IPS panel.

A screenshot from the ATIV Odyssey's 800x480 screen, enlarged to show detail.

Andrew Cunningham

A screenshot from the HTC Windows Phone 8X's 1280x720 screen, enlarged to show detail.

Andrew Cunningham

Even if the screens were otherwise identical, you'd lose some detail by losing pixel density—in the Odyssey, you'll notice this the most on Web pages, where you'll generally need to zoom in a little more often to make smaller text legible. Now let's look at the additional problems introduced by Super AMOLED—you may want to click these to enlarge them and get the full effect.

Examine the text in the photo of the Super AMOLED screen—if you look carefully, you can see spots of red and blue surrounding the white text, whereas the photo of the 8X's screen shows just white pixels—this is Super AMOLED's subpixel arrangement in action. It's even more obvious if you look at the icon for the Windows Phone Store—the pixels appear to be more rectangular than square, and if you look you can see red subpixels hanging over the left and right sides of the tile.

At normal viewing distances this effect is subtle, but it has the effect of making both text and images seem just a little blurrier, an issue exacerbated by the lower pixel density of the screen. It's a bit hard on the eyes, especially if you're coming from an IPS display (or even a different type of AMOLED display, many of which minimize or eliminate this problem)—going back to the HTC 8X's screen after half an hour or so of reading text on the Odyssey was like giving my eyes a cool drink of water.

Honestly, the screen won't be a deal breaker for most—it's still bright and colorful, and all you have to do is walk into a Best Buy and look at the wall of TVs with the color and brightness cranked to see that most consumers value these things pretty highly. For people who are bothered by inaccurate colors or fuzzy text, though, the Odyssey's screen is the biggest mark against it.

72 Reader Comments

Where I live we dont get large subsidies, I personally buy handsets outright and use pay-as-you-go to save monthly costs (and if you have a hard month just use Wi-fi). Low end handsets have slightly more relevence elsewhere.

This handset looks a lot like a re-purposed Galaxy S3 mini in design and handset size.

I don't know if those battery tests are the best idea for phones. Seems like it rewards screens with low maximum brightness. It also don't really account for things like LTE battery use which can be huge in real life conditions.

I don't think it's fair to spend so much time bagging-out the AMOLED screen. In all research thus-far conducted, the VAST majority of people favour higher contrast over any other screen feature/spec.

AMOLED offers thousands of times the contrast of LCD screens and I think the Galaxy line of phones shows just how much people want OLED screens:

The Galaxy line of phones feature: easily the worst build quality of any so-called flagship phones, average battery life, average performance (for a top-of-the-line phone, performance is superb compared with mid-range smartphones), a decent camera and terrible software customisations.

But people continue to buy them in ridiculous numbers, and a very large proportion of their customers go for the screen (I like to think they stay for the Android OS).

Samsung's AMOLED screen in the first Galaxy phone prompted the Retina display and had Microsoft design an entire mobile operating system to look better on AMOLED displays.

It's not wrong to prefer LCD to AMOLED, but it's equally valid to prefer AMOLED to LCD (and it seems like there's an awful lot of people in that camp, despite basically every tech site blasting every AMOLED screeded phone for having a crappy display).

btw, I don't use a Galaxy because I don't like them. For what it's worth I'm running a Lumia 800. I'm looking for an upgrade, but I need a high-quality 4-4.3" phone with AMOLED display and it seems like nothing is coming any time soon.

Seems to stack up well to the HTC 8S (which apparently isn't sold in the US? Available up here in Canada though), which was a series of compromises (albeit with an attractive build and better build quality, but it had 4GB storage and a 1ghz dual core. So I'd much prefer this Samsung one). 8GB is a bit lacking though when you remember you can't install apps on a SD card with WP8.

Verizon seems to stock the 822 right now for $0 on a two year contract though (as a sale price). The problem with a $9.99 phone is it'll likely only ever be discounted to $0 as well, unless they give it cheaper contract options (then it could be really tempting).

At $480 though, that's not that much of a budget device. That's slightly cheaper than some phones, far more than a Nexus 4, nothing to really help adoption of WP8, just give it a bit of a midrange phone.

Don 't be so one.sided about Amoled. It also offers pure blacks that i'm really enjoying on my galaxy note... and missing on my Note 10.1

Some AMOLED screens are fine, some suck. This one [demonstrably] sucks.

Are the blacks not truly black, or is it something that you don't personally value because you don't use your phone in bed ?

It's not all about resolution. Contrast, brightness, true blacks... are at least as important, and focusing on just resolution is sloppy reviewing. Sorry.

I didn't focus on just resolution, thanks. Resolution is one of the things I talked about. The blacks are fine, but the screen also irritated my eyes when I read on it. As I said, AMOLED doesn't inherently make for a bad screen - I like the Galaxy Nexus and the Note II and the GS III just fine. This particular screen may bother some people.

Seems to stack up well to the HTC 8S (which apparently isn't sold in the US? Available up here in Canada though), which was a series of compromises (albeit with an attractive build and better build quality, but it had 4GB storage and a 1ghz dual core. So I'd much prefer this Samsung one). 8GB is a bit lacking though when you remember you can't install apps on a SD card with WP8.

Verizon seems to stock the 822 right now for $0 on a two year contract though (as a sale price). The problem with a $9.99 phone is it'll likely only ever be discounted to $0 as well, unless they give it cheaper contract options (then it could be really tempting).

At $480 though, that's not that much of a budget device. That's slightly cheaper than some phones, far more than a Nexus 4, nothing to really help adoption of WP8, just give it a bit of a midrange phone.

Yeah the flagship phones tend to be the same (more or less) everywhere, but get into the cheap end and the market seems to fluctuate much more based on where you are, what your carriers do, etc.

Don 't be so one.sided about Amoled. It also offers pure blacks that i'm really enjoying on my galaxy note... and missing on my Note 10.1

Some AMOLED screens are fine, some suck. This one [demonstrably] sucks.

If you hold the phone up to your eye it sure looks worse, but in the rest of the screenshots, it seems to look quite a lot better .

Depends on what you're doing and how far the phone is away from your eyes - reading in bed in the dark tended to bother me more than reading in the light on the train, for example.

This is a use-case I haven't thought of to be honest. I do use my phone in bed on occassion, but I'm not reading anything long enough for my eyes to get irritated (I'm mostly looking at my phone on the way to and from work, or on the couch, but on the couch is mostly not web browsing).

I find the washed-out "blacks" (that are actually grey) on the phones that supposedly have the "best" screens to be a LOT more annoying.

Don 't be so one.sided about Amoled. It also offers pure blacks that i'm really enjoying on my galaxy note... and missing on my Note 10.1

Some AMOLED screens are fine, some suck. This one [demonstrably] sucks.

Are the blacks not truly black, or is it something that you don't personally value because you don't use your phone in bed ?

It's not all about resolution. Contrast, brightness, true blacks... are at least as important, and focusing on just resolution is sloppy reviewing. Sorry.

I didn't focus on just resolution, thanks. Resolution is one of the things I talked about. The blacks are fine, but the screen also irritated my eyes when I read on it. As I said, AMOLED doesn't inherently make for a bad screen - I like the Galaxy Nexus and the Note II and the GS III just fine. This particular screen may bother some people.

Oh ? Where's the info on brightness contrast gamut and deltaE then ? I can't seem to find it ... maybe it's hidden behind all those pictures to demonstrate that 1280x720 is better than 840x400, especially at 10x zoom ?

Don 't be so one.sided about Amoled. It also offers pure blacks that i'm really enjoying on my galaxy note... and missing on my Note 10.1

Some AMOLED screens are fine, some suck. This one [demonstrably] sucks.

Are the blacks not truly black, or is it something that you don't personally value because you don't use your phone in bed ?

It's not all about resolution. Contrast, brightness, true blacks... are at least as important, and focusing on just resolution is sloppy reviewing. Sorry.

I didn't focus on just resolution, thanks. Resolution is one of the things I talked about. The blacks are fine, but the screen also irritated my eyes when I read on it. As I said, AMOLED doesn't inherently make for a bad screen - I like the Galaxy Nexus and the Note II and the GS III just fine. This particular screen may bother some people.

Oh ? Where's the info on brightness contrast gamut and deltaE then ? I can't seem to find it ... maybe it's hidden behind all those pictures to demonstrate that 1280x720 is better than 840x400, especially at 10x zoom ?

There are two screenshots and a couple hundred words - by far, I spent more time on AMOLED/Pentile and its effect on images/text.

Don 't be so one.sided about Amoled. It also offers pure blacks that i'm really enjoying on my galaxy note... and missing on my Note 10.1

Some AMOLED screens are fine, some suck. This one [demonstrably] sucks.

If you hold the phone up to your eye it sure looks worse, but in the rest of the screenshots, it seems to look quite a lot better .

Depends on what you're doing and how far the phone is away from your eyes - reading in bed in the dark tended to bother me more than reading in the light on the train, for example.

This is a use-case I haven't thought of to be honest. I do use my phone in bed on occassion, but I'm not reading anything long enough for my eyes to get irritated (I'm mostly looking at my phone on the way to and from work, or on the couch, but on the couch is mostly not web browsing).

I find the washed-out "blacks" (that are actually grey) on the phones that supposedly have the "best" screens to be a LOT more annoying.

Yeah it's hard to account for all possible use cases, though I try to give as generalized/helpful information/comparisons as possible.

I think we've all got different stuff that bothers us about displays - I'm OK with the contrast ratio in most IPS displays, for example, but bad viewing angles really set me off.

I loved my Galaxy S screen until I realized how bad the blue tint was when I used someone's iPhone 4. I won't say I will never buy another phone with an amoled screen, but screen quality is important when 90% interactions with a device require you to look at it.

Not all Super AMOLED screens are Pentile. For instance, the Galaxy S2's screen is not (it's Super AMOLED Plus, meaning it has all three subpixels; maybe the lack of the "plus" in the article's description of the technology makes the article accurate, but slightly misleading).

I don't buy the argument that this phone is worthwhile just because it's nearly free on contract. If you are in such financial straits that you can't afford the $99 to get the worlds better Lumia 920, you shouldn't be buying a smart phone in the first place.

The Galaxy line of phones feature: easily the worst build quality of any so-called flagship phones, average battery life, average performance (for a top-of-the-line phone, performance is superb compared with mid-range smartphones), a decent camera and terrible software customisations.

1- build quality: it really depends what you call build quality. My brother's Samsung Windows Phone (not the reviewed one, an older one; don't know which model exactly, last year's) has survived a spin (actually, 1 hour of spins... a full wash) in the washing machine; his wife's iPhone 4S has not survived its first fall. Nor its second one. Also, I've never heard one complaint about scratches on Galaxies, as opposed to iPhones. Build quality != Ohhh Shinyyyy

2- battery life doesn't seem to be an issue for non-LTE handsets these days: 1 big workday + an evening is a given ? I'm not sure anyone is really looking for more than a day ?

3- performance comes and goes. The S3 was class-leading on several scores when it came out, it's clearly long in the tooth now. Performance really isn't a key criteria for anyone except reviewers and hardcore gamers (do any hardcore gamers actually game on a phone ?). I'm amazed at how reviews spend pages on perfs, and nothing on sound power and quality. Doesn't *everyone* use their phone to play music, podcasts, and radio ?

I loved my Galaxy S screen until I realized how bad the blue tint was when I used someone's iPhone 4. I won't say I will never buy another phone with an amoled screen, but screen quality is important when 90% interactions with a device require you to look at it.

Oddly enough according to anandtech the samsung amoled screen on the HTC one s is quite color calibrated. I compared it to my HTC sensation with a photo, and it wasn't really much difference.

Wish Nokia would bring the Lumia 620 to the US. Given the far nicer and more stylish case, better screen, and superior OEM support (including Nokia's exclusive apps), it seems a much better total package. I know the Ativ Odyssey has a faster processor and more memory, but overall it seems to me like the Lumia 620 would do better than the Ativ Odyssey.

Not all Super AMOLED screens are Pentile. For instance, the Galaxy S2's screen is not (it's Super AMOLED Plus, meaning it has all three subpixels; maybe the lack of the "plus" in the article's description of the technology makes the article accurate, but slightly misleading).

Point well taken - I've gone through the article to clarify that 1) not all AMOLED displays use PenTile, and 2) our observations here apply only to Super AMOLED (no Plus, no HD, etc.) and not to some of the other AMOLED variants.

It's not all about resolution. Contrast, brightness, true blacks... are at least as important, and focusing on just resolution is sloppy reviewing. Sorry.

It's not all about true blacks. Resolution, sharpness, clarity... are at least as important, and focusing on just "does it do true black" is silly. Sorry.

Again, is there anything about the screen in that review that is NOT about the resolution ? "Resolution sharpness and clarity" are pretty much 3 ways to say the same thing, sorry; and the treatment of that issue using 10x zoom and comparing to a phone with more than twice the resolution and that seems to cost $100 more (both on-contract, that's 10x more, and off-contract) is a bit off, too. The issue is not so much AMOLED as... *less than half* the resolution ! (we French have a saying: "enfoncer une porte ouverte" ^^)What about contrast, brightness, gamut, deltaE,... ? It's semi-OK to randomly focus on the screen, it's not OK to focus on ONE of the characteristics that make a screen good or bad, and leave out all the others. (And very not OK on that one focused characteristic to mis-aim criticism at the underlying technology instead of just the plain old pixel count).

Also, is there anything at all about sound quality on loudspeaker and jack ? A lot of customers do use their phones to listen to stuff.

It's not all about resolution. Contrast, brightness, true blacks... are at least as important, and focusing on just resolution is sloppy reviewing. Sorry.

It's not all about true blacks. Resolution, sharpness, clarity... are at least as important, and focusing on just "does it do true black" is silly. Sorry.

Again, is there anything about the screen in that review that is NOT about the resolution ? "Resolution sharpness and clarity" are pretty much 3 ways to say the same thing, sorry; and the treatment of that issue using 10x zoom and comparing to a phone with more than twice the resolution and that seems to cost $100 more (both on-contract, that's 10x more, and off-contract) is a bit off, too. The issue is not so much AMOLED as... *less than half* the resolution ! (we French have a saying: "enfoncer une porte ouverte" ^^)What about contrast, brightness, gamut, deltaE,... ? It's semi-OK to randomly focus on the screen, it's not OK to focus on ONE of the characteristics that make a screen good or bad, and leave out all the others. (And very not OK on that one focused characteristic to mis-aim criticism at the underlying technology instead of just the plain old pixel count).

Also, is there anything at all about sound quality on loudspeaker and jack ? A lot of customers do use their phones to listen to stuff.

That's it for me, I feel like I've made my point several times over.

I'm not sure how my criticism of the underlying technology is "mis-aimed" because it's the underlying technology that makes the display look weird.

It's there in the little specs table at the top of the page - $479.99.

[/quote]

Baffling. Are LTE radios really that expensive? You can get a 32GB ipod touch - better screen, better processor, 4x the storage and the Apple markup and it is almost $200 cheaper.

I know it's not endemic to this phone, but why do handsets cost so much? I know google makes almost zero profit on the Nexus 4, but that's only $250 and it's a much better phone. It even has an LTE radio in it. You'd think a phone like this one that cuts so many corners could turn a profit at $300 or $325,

Are you sure ? Have you tried comparing it to a same-resolution LCD, not one with more than twice the rez ?

Even the 480x320 panel on the older iPhones (just to pick an example) doesn't have the exact issues we've pointed out on the Super AMOLED display (the red/blue subpixels around the text, the red subpixels around the orange tile). The pixel density issue and the AMOLED issue are two different things, though the latter is perhaps exacerbated by the former.

I know it's not endemic to this phone, but why do handsets cost so much? I know google makes almost zero profit on the Nexus 4, but that's only $250 and it's a much better phone. It even has an LTE radio in it. You'd think a phone like this one that cuts so many corners could turn a profit at $300 or $325,

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.